Hockey is a high paced, physically demanding sport that requires a high level of skill and endurance from the players. To stay on top of their game, hockey players are in need of reliable high performance equipment that enhances their game skills. As hockey sticks are used to pass the puck to other players and to shoot at the opposing team's net to score goals, they are considered a key piece of equipment of any hockey player. Any slight improvement in a player's maneuverability, responsiveness and performance (including puck handling and control, shot accuracy, and shot speed) with a particular stick can have a significant impact on the player's game.
Conventional hockey sticks have a shaft and an adjoining blade. The blade has a body and a neck that connects the body to the shaft. The blade has a heel at the end of the body below the neck and a toe disposed at end of the body opposite the heel. The body has two main faces, a front face and a rear face, that each extend from the heel to the toe. The front face has the puck striking surface of the blade.
Conventional hockey stick blades are curved (when viewed from above) to form a forward facing “pocket”. They may also be “twisted” such that when the stick is being correctly held on the playing surface the blade appears twisted when viewed from above. Thus, conventional hockey stick blades often have a three dimensional curvature. The specific curvature of a blade is one of the physical characteristics of a blade that is very important to skilled hockey players. The curvature of the blade plays a significant role in a player's ability both to control the puck while the player is moving and for accuracy when the player is shooting. Each player has their own preferences with regard to the curvature of the blades that they use allowing them to have their best performance. In this respect, when one goes to buy a conventional hockey stick each manufacturer typically sells the same model of stick at the retail level with many different shaped curvatures.
There are several different kinds of shots that a player can take with a stick. These include “shovel shots”, “wrist shots”, “snap shots”, “slap shots”, “backhand shots” and “one timers”. (These shots are all well known to those skilled in the art of hockey.) These different types of shots each require the player to carry out a different motion with their stick. The location of puck with respect to the blade, the movement of the puck along the striking surface of the blade, and the travel of the puck, all may vary between these different types of shots. Thus, different physical characteristics of the stick and the blade may vary in importance with respect to the different types of shots.
In many shots, prior to leaving contact with the blade, the puck is translationally moved along the face of the blade (whether horizontally, vertically or some combination of both), and this movement is a key factor in the shot being performed correctly.
Further, when the player is moving with the puck, the player may move the puck along the blade.
Conventional hockey stick blades have smooth faces. As is known in the art, having a smooth blade face can make the handling of the puck with the stick challenging as there is little friction between the blade and puck. This may make it difficult to control the relative position of the puck and the blade, as well to accurately move the puck along the surface of the blade when the two are in contact. This difficulty is known in the art.
To overcome this difficulty, hockey players often wrap hockey tape around their blades. Many players do this completely from heel to toe, although there are others that wrap only a portion of the blade. Hockey tape is a self-adhesive cloth tape that is made of either natural or synthetic fibers. Being cloth, the non-adhesive side of the tape is rough. When a blade is wrapped with hockey tape, the portions thereof that have exposed non-adhesive surface will have an increased ability to generate friction because of the roughness of the “cloth” structure as compared with the smooth surface of the underlying blade. The players thus wrap their blades to increase the amount of friction between the blade and the puck, which makes it more difficult for the puck to slide along a face of the blade. This hopefully makes it easier to more accurately position one with respect to the other and control the puck's movement. To further increase their control over the puck, some players even add waxes or other chemical coatings on top of the tape to provide for an additional adherence between the blade and the puck.
An alternative to traditional hockey stick tapes is the newer hockey blade tape. Hockey blade tape is a sheet of a synthetic material that has a smooth surface on one side and a ridged surface on the other. The sheet is shaped so as to have the shape of the entire front/rear side of a hockey stick blade. In use, the smooth side of the blade tape is adhered to the front/rear side (as the case may be) of the hockey stick, either via self-adherence or the application of a glue, leaving the ridged side exposed to be available to contact the puck. The ridged surface of the blade tape will have increased friction with the puck than will the smooth surface of the blade.
In addition to the advantages described above, in many cases, the increased fiction between the puck and the blade (no matter which of the previously described methods is used to cause it) has the additional effect of imparting a spinning motion to the puck when the puck is translationally moved across a face of the blade. Depending on the shot and the player, the puck may retain this spinning motion as it leaves the stick and continues along its shot trajectory. This spinning motion will likely beneficially improve the shot as it gives the puck a gyroscopic effect. This means that the puck will resist angular movement of its axis of rotation, and it will likely be easier to cause the puck's trajectory to be as desired and make unwanted deviations from that trajectory less likely.
For these reasons, the use of hockey stick tape or hockey blade tape is quite common. Nonetheless, improvements in hockey sticks in this respect are desirable.